Norman Rockwell's Forgotten Model Cathy Burow Recalls 1949 'Prom Dress' Cover

Cathy Burow, née Smith, now 89, was a 14-year-old student at Bancroft Junior High School in West Hollywood in fall 1948 when Norman Rockwell and photographer Pete Todd approached her during a football game to model for a Saturday Evening Post cover. Rockwell, working in Los Angeles to escape Vermont winter, selected her from hundreds of girls. The painting, titled 'Prom Dress,' appeared on the March 19, 1949, cover. Rockwell and Todd took her to North Hollywood to shoot in a stranger's bedroom, borrowed a dress from Nancy's on Hollywood Boulevard (which Rockwell returned instead of giving to Burow), and paid her $10 each. Burow never received the dress; Rockwell arranged a PR deal with Nancy's, placing a box with the store's name in the painting. She later exchanged letters with Rockwell, the last in 1977; he died in November 1978. Burow married her high school boyfriend Glen in 1953, raised three children, and was widowed in 2012. Photographer Dave LaBelle, who had interviewed Rockwell models for a 2000 project, rediscovered Burow after a reader's letter and visited her in Somis, California.